


The Journey

by MelyndaR



Category: Scorpion (TV 2014), The Chemical Garden Trilogy - Lauren DeStefano
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Teenagers, F/M, Gen, Polyamory, The Chemical Garden Trilogy AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-07
Updated: 2017-05-12
Packaged: 2018-09-07 04:09:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply, Underage
Chapters: 8
Words: 17,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8782387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MelyndaR/pseuds/MelyndaR
Summary: In life, the journey is supposed to be as important as the destination, right?That's a pretty hard thing to keep in mind when you know exactly when you and your family are going to die... if you don't somehow manage to save them first.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> As the tags say, this is a Chemical Garden Trilogy/Scorpion fusion. If you haven't read the books by Lauren DeStefano, I highly recommend them.  
> And also - why are there not more fusions into the Chemical Garden world? They make my angst-loving, multi-shipping heart so very happy, and I wish there were more of them!

_Megan O’Brien_

_January, Year One_

Megan O’Brien was only six years old – though that meant about a third of her lifespan was behind her – but she already knew a few things. As she stared at her parents’ fresh graves, she listed them, stubbornly refusing to give into the mind-numbing side of grief.

One: She was smart and resilient, and she knew things about how to survive. She and Walter, one year her junior, were going to be okay.

Two: No matter how much she knew and understood, Walter knew far more, even though he was a year younger. If – or more accurately _when_ – it became necessary, Walter would survive well _enough_ on his own. For now, he was her _invaluable_ partner in this new phase of life, in this terrible game of _surviving._

Three: She and Walter really had been lucky to have their parents for as long as they had. Six and five years, respectively, was a long time to know your parents these days. The only “real” downside – such a stupid phrase to consider in this moment – was that their parents had been smart enough to love someone with a five-year age difference. They had died within a week of each other.

Which led Megan’s thoughts back to the fourth, and most inescapable fact that she and Walter were facing.

Four: The O’Brien siblings were now alone against the world.

* * *

_Megan O’Brien_

_April, Year One_

Burying two fully-grown adults – their parents, no less – had been a huge, terrible task for Megan and Walter, but they had done it. Surviving the bitter winter months on the street had been even more difficult, but they’d managed that, too.

This, though… As the duo looked at each other, then back at the black SUV trapping them in the alley they’d most recently called home, it became pretty clear that neither of them knew how they were going to get out of this.

“Run for it,” Megan muttered to Walter, doing her best to make it sound like an order, to keep her voice from shaking.

The vehicle was black, not gray, but, really, how stupid was it for kidnappers to keep their transportation a uniform color? If these people wanted her for whatever reason, there was _no_ way she was going to let Walter get hurt or worse in the crosshairs.

“Not without you!” Walter snapped stubbornly.

“Oh, for pity’s sake, W-”

“Walter O’Brien!”

An American first-generation climbed from the back of the van, calling Megan’s little brother’s name, and her blood ran cold.

“My name is Cabe Gallo, and I’ve gone through a lot of trouble to find you. Do you know what a think-tank is, son?”

From just a step behind Megan – who had instinctively stepped in front of him – Walter went very, very still before he mumbled, “Yes.”

 “You understand what a ‘medical think-tank’ implies?” Cabe Gallo asked Walter patiently.

Megan kept wary, hard eyes trained on the first-generation as Walter answered, sounding more and more curious, “You’re looking for a cure.”

To what was too obvious to bear stating, and they all knew it.

Mr. Gallo smiled, nodding at Walter as if he’d somehow aced a test. A test with a result that Megan wasn’t sure she wanted to see.

But she didn’t have a choice in the matter, as it turned out, because the next words out of Mr. Gallo’s mouth were, “How would you like to help find that cure, son?”

Walter’s eyes grew wide, but Megan butted in before he could give the reply he obviously wanted to. “How would he do that?”

Still Mr. Gallo didn’t even look away from Walter as he answered her question. “He would come with me to live in my house – a big house; the government has given me quite a lot of money to cure the virus – and work in the labs that are on the property.”

Still watching him out of the corner of her eye, Megan saw when Walter’s eyebrows creased and he said in a small but firm voice, “Not without Megan. I won’t go without my sister.”

Finally Mr. Gallo looked at her, seeming to consider. “Sure, son; we can find a place for her, too.”

From the look in her eye, Megan wasn’t sure she was going to like whatever “place” was on his mind. _If_ this man could give them what he was suggesting he could… Megan really wanted to trust him, and Walter clearly did too, but their parents had warned them too many times about people who would try to take advantage of them.

Apparently she wasn’t doing a good job of masking her thoughts, because Mr. Gallo looked between her and Walter, saying, “If you want proof that I’m telling you the truth about all of this, I can show you a number of photos from my estate, and even introduce you to the boy Walter will be working with.”

Megan glanced back at the SUV, asking, “Is the boy in there?”

“M-hm.” Mr. Gallo nodded, moving so that he could shepherd the siblings towards the vehicle. “His name is Tobias. He’s been living and working with me for a year now. His previous research partner recently passed away from the virus, and then we found you, Walter.”

Mr. Gallo smiled down at her brother, and, uncertain of what the proper response was, Walter smiled back at him. _Walter’s smile was actually genuine, too,_ Megan noted in surprise. _But Mr. Gallo seemed nice, too… Maybe they really would be okay if they went with him? After all, could it really be any worse than the last three months that they’d spent living on the street…?_

When Mr. Gallo slid open a door on the side of the SUV, Walter jumped right in, practically _eager_ – not that Megan particularly blamed him. Real shelter from the last nippy cold before spring was a very nice thought. Peering curiously at the boy sitting across from Walter, Megan got in and sat down beside her brother.

Tobias looked skeptically at Mr. Gallo as the first-generation got into the SUV, sitting beside him… and shutting the sliding door. Megan and Walter both tensed, and Tobias didn’t help anything as he asked Mr. Gallo, “You expect these two to be able to do research, Cabe?”

“I expect _him_ to, yes,” Cabe answered, nodding towards Walter.

“Are you kidding me? Peyton was fifteen years _older_ than me, and decently smart. Now you expect me to work with someone who’s fifteen years _younger_ than me?”

“You’re not even fifteen yourself,” Megan snorted, even as she put an arm around her brother’s shoulders.

“So you’re ten?” Walter asked curiously, but he was eyeing the machine in Tobias’s hands in a way that suggested he was much more interested in it than in the other boy’s answer.

“Yeah,” Tobias replied on a huff, turning his attention back to his tablet.

“I’m only five,” Walter volunteered. “Megan is six.”

“Good for you,” Tobias replied flatly, glancing up at Megan, he added, “And bad for her.”

Walter shrank back into the seat for a moment; at the same time Megan realized this was probably the most talking Walter had done, particularly to strangers, since their parents’ deaths. She rolled her eyes at Tobias – and froze when she realized that the SUV had started moving while they were talking. She looked at Mr. Gallo, her chest heaving with a panicked breath as she reached for the door handle.

“Careful,” Mr. Gallo said, stopping just short of touching her wrist. “It’s not locked; it’ll open if you try it, and I’m not sure you want to be spilled out of a moving vehicle, do you?” Megan said nothing, but she had regained Walter’s attention, only to note that he hadn’t looked concerned until she did – and it couldn’t have been because _he_ hadn’t noticed they were moving. As if he was reading her thoughts, Mr. Gallo leaned in closer to her and murmured, “I’ll have them stop and let you both out if you want, but it seems to me that you’re brother’s pretty willing and excited to be here… doesn’t it?”

Megan glanced silently at Walter, taking in the way he was stretching to see what Tobias was looking at on his device. He was completely relaxed in the other boy’s presence, and Walter didn’t relax around strangers easily. Was it really just because he could sense that he had found someone he could relate to? Because Megan was willing to bet that he had. Like Walter, Tobias was clearly smarter than his age would imply, even if he did have the edge of someone who knew more about the practical world than Walter did. She was willing to bet that he had spent time living on the street, though that was clearly not what he was doing now.

Now he seemed to be doing exactly what Mr. Gallo said he wanted Walter to do: working in a government-funded think tank to help destroy the virus. Clearly Tobias was better off for it.

Who was she to deny Walter the same opportunity? Regardless of what staying in this SUV might mean for her, who was she to deny Walter the chance to get off the streets? If Mr. Gallo represented the stability that he appeared to, then certainly that was a better option than living on the street…

Megan settled back in her seat. “Okay. We’ll go with you.”

Cabe Gallo nodded, a surprisingly happy smile brightening his eyes slightly. “Glad to hear it, kid.”


	2. Chapter 2

_Walter O’Brien_

_June, Year One_

It was surprisingly easy to adjust to living with Cabe and Tobias, to adjust to the opulence that Walter and Megan had suddenly been surrounded with. Even spending his days in the lab working with Tobias was nice, though the two of them bickered a lot. Sometimes Megan would join them, but Cabe had hired a tutor for her, which took up a great deal of her time during the day.

In the meantime, as he worked alone with Tobias, they both noticed something that neither of them liked.

Without a doubt, Tobias was driven to find a cure for the virus, almost fanatically so… but… he simply wasn’t as smart as Walter. The five years’ age difference between them sometimes made up for it, but, having come so close and still finding Tobias to fall short, Walter found himself wishing that there was someone else out there who was closer to… whatever _he_ was. Someone his own age with a similar intelligence quota – which Cabe had quantified when he first arrived, and ascertained was 197.

As much as he wished for that sort of friend, though, it wasn’t likely to be found. Nor was intelligence something that could simply be bought and installed in another human being.

However. _Somehow_ Cabe – or perhaps one of his friends in the government – had located the impossible.

Two months after Walter and Megan moved in with Cabe, Tobias, and their small army of servants, Cabe brought a six-year-old boy down to the labs, declaring, “Tobias, Walter... this is Mark Collins. He’s a genius like you two.”

“He’s another kid,” Tobias groused instantly, but with barely a sideways glance, Walter ignored him.

Cabe, on the other hand, gave Tobias a firm glare, replying, “I thought maybe having a fresh face in the lab would help you boys _get along_. Plus, he can help you both in your research.”

At first, Walter had given the other boy a curious once over, but he looked again when Cabe added, “According to the IQ test he took on the way back from where we found him, Mark has an IQ of 190.”

“Great,” Tobias muttered under his breath as he turned his back to the rest of the room, returning to the test tubes he was making notes on. “There’s two of them now.”

Funnily enough, Walter had been thinking the exact same thing… just with significantly less sarcasm. He smiled broadly at the boy with sandy brown hair before looking to Cabe and asking, “Have you shown him around yet?”

“No, I have not.” Cabe smiled, asking, “You want to?”

Glancing guiltily back at the notes that he should have been helping Tobias make, he asked Cabe instead, “Can I?” With a nod, Cabe let him go, and so Walter hurried into the elevator in step with Mark. “There’s not actually a _whole_ lot to show you, even if it does still seem like a really big place to live,” Walter said informatively, beginning to rattle off information. “The level where we all sleep is the entry level, we’re going back up there now. The lab is basically like the basement of this place, though it’s not cold, at least. Above the level where the geniuses are meant to stay are six ‘wives’ levels, but none of us are old enough to actually _have_ wives yet, of course, so Cabe stays in the level above the geniuses’.

“The genius who died from the virus a few months ago, Peyton Temple, was married to four women, however. I never met him, or any of his family, but according to Tobias, Peyton’s wives and children lived on the level above Cabe until he died. Tobias also said that they all now live on a different government property where the children are being monitored to see if they show any signs of increased intelligence, like us and their father.

“But. Anyway. Tobias and I, and now you, mostly spend our days in the lab, and our free time on our level of the house. Except for dinner. We all have supper with Cabe at the end of the evening, and on Sunday nights we all watch a movie on his level of the house.” Stopping in the middle of the hallway on the “geniuses’ level,” as Cabe called it, Walter turned to Mark and continued his monologue by saying, “I’ll show you the library later; my sister, Megan, is doing her lessons with her tutor in there right now.”

“Your sister is enabled as well?” Mark asked curiously.

“No… not like you and I are, that is. In her own way, though, yes.”

One of Mark’s bushy eyebrows ticked upwards as he asked, “But no?”

A little begrudgingly, Walter nodded, repeating, “But no.”

“So why is she here?”

“Because I refused to come with Cabe in the first place without her.”

“How loyal of you.”

Walter wasn’t sure what to make of the other boy’s tone, so he wondered if his smile looked strange as he answered, “Friendships and familial relations are certainly important things to be loyal to.”

Just as soon as Mark’s nearly patronizing tone had come, it left as he slung an arm around Walter’s shoulders, making Walter stiffen in surprise as Mark smiled at him. “Well, Walter, now you and I can be loyal to one another too, right?”

Walter’s smile was genuine and broad as he nodded, repeating, “Right.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I almost feel like I owe you guys some sort of explanation by this point, especially in regards to Toby. Here Toby... is (hopefully) not necessarily the Toby we know and love from the show. Since this story starts with them as children, I'm hoping that at some points along the way I can show you how - in this universe - they might have become the characters we see on-screen. So... yeah. Toby is not necessarily /Toby/ now, if that makes any sense, but he will become him, if I do my job as a writer correctly.

_Tobias Curtis_

_February, Year Two_

“Tobias, can I talk to you for a second?”

Cabe’s hand coming to rest heavily on Tobias’s shoulder was the only reason the boy looked up from the transmutation simulation he was running, and at the request, he instantly looked back at the project with a grimace. “This really should be monitored every step of the way. In case something goes wrong, I’ll want to see exactly where, so I know where to change my data at.”

“Here then; we’ll get Walter to watch it for you. Hey, Walt, come over here!”

Tobias snorted, looking across the lab to where Walter and Mark had their heads bent together over a new chemical compound that they wanted to test. “Yeah, good luck with that. He and Mark haven’t left the lab in literally six days. Since you won’t give Megan an elevator key to get down here, she hasn’t even seen Walter in _eight_ days.”

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Sort of. You all work very hard down here – which is _very_ necessary – but… I’m afraid you all may work too hard. If – God forbid – you boys don’t find a cure before you’re in your twenties yourself, I don’t want you to… well, to look back and think you wasted the years you do have.”

“We will find a cure, so they won’t be wasted years,” Tobias said firmly. He refused to believe anything else, and he didn’t like when someone else did either.

“Tobias,” Cabe shook his head as if he’d gotten off-track. “Listen. I know that Walter and Mark work great together—”

“It’s called ‘going down the rabbit hole,’ actually.” Tobias knew he should’ve told Cabe how unhealthy long binges like the ones Mark and Walter frequently took actually were, but instead he added, “It’s when they do some of their best work.”

“In that case…” Cabe looked uncertainly at the two boys with worry buried somewhere deep in his eyes, but his gaze was clear when he looked back at Tobias. “Good for them. But—”

The tablet in front of Tobias beeped, and he picked up the device to check what had happened. “SIMULATION INCOMPLETE; MUTATION FAILED” flashed across the screen, and he grit his teeth, setting the tablet down with a jarring amount of force.

“What’s the matter?” Cabe asked, that concern flashing through his eyes again – this time as he looked at Tobias.

“I’m working on a new theory, coming at the whole thing from a different angle, and that particular degree of an angle just failed.”

“How so?”

Tobias scrubbed his hands over his eyes before folding them primly on the table in front of him. “Cabe, _please_ do not take this the wrong way, but I understand that you are here to manage three things: finances, security, and…” his nose curled. “Child-rearing. The science of what we’re doing here falls under none of those three categories. So. In all honesty, would you understand it if I explained it to you?”

Cabe gave him a dry smile, and instead of answering him, asked, “Does that mean your thing is done, and you can talk now?”

Tobias nodded and shoved his tablet further away as if to further display his spite for it all.

“Let’s go for a walk,” Cabe suggested. “All of this talk of being cooped up down here is making me want to stretch my legs.”

Tobias stood from the table and followed Cabe into the elevator and out of the house, stopping only long enough to grab his hat on the way out.

“You’re eleven now, right?” Cabe asked him as they made their way across the immaculate lawn, unnaturally bright green as it was, even for February. Knowing what particular chemicals made it that way was more Walter’s area of expertise. Tobias just shoved his hands in his pockets and nodded in answer to Cabe’s question.

Watching Cabe, Tobias cataloged the way the first-generation’s shoulders were tense beneath his suit, the way he had put his hands in his own pockets – a subconscious mirroring of what Tobias was doing, meant to put him at ease. Nearly seven years of living on the street before Cabe found him, having to decide in a split second who it was and wasn’t safe to trust, had taught Tobias a thing or two thousand about reading people, and right now he knew Cabe was nervous about whatever he was going to bring up. “Why? What does my age have to do with anything?”

Cabe appeared to stifle a sigh. “It goes back to Walter and Mark, in a way. They have each other… and in each other, they have a partner. Walter even has Megan, and she does a pretty good job of trying to look out for both him and Mark when they’ll let her. But,” Cabe hesitated before continuing, “You seem to be our resident lone wolf, Tobias, and I don’t like it.”

“Does that mean that you have another enabled person that you’re going to bring here?” he asked, his interest instantly piqued.

“That…” Again, Cabe hesitated, but for just a bit longer this time. “Isn’t what I have in mind this time. I tried that – I thought maybe giving you a partner again would draw you out into the bigger world – when I brought Walter in, and that kind of blew up in my face, for as much as you two bicker. So, I brought Mark in, thinking he might help you and Walter view your relationship as less of a competition, and we see now how _that_ worked out.”

 _You think Walter and_ I _are competitive with one another?!_ Tobias thought, and also that Cabe needed to spend more time observing in the lab than he did patrolling the grounds, but he said nothing, letting Cabe get to his point instead.

“So, no, I’m not thinking of bringing another enabled person onto the estate; I’m thinking that you’re getting old enough that it’s time for you to start considering a different sort of relationship entirely.”

Tobias’s eyebrows drew together in confusion, and he was about to say that he didn’t understand what Cabe meant… until he did. He froze on the edge of the lawn, his eyes widening with poorly-concealed horror as he snapped, “You want me to get _married_?!”

“Don’t look at me like that, son, you knew this was coming eventually.”

“Eventually, yeah, but… well, I kind of thought I’d have a few more years.”

What he’d really thought was that Cabe would eventually ask him to marry Megan – which… wasn’t something he wanted in the first place; she made for too great a little sister for that – but based on that theory, he hadn’t planned on marrying until he was sixteen. _Granted, polygamy is the norm, stupid; he could still want you to marry now_ and _marry Megan later. Waiting until you’re sixteen to marry? Definitely not the norm these days._

He really should’ve known that he wasn’t going to be that lucky. _Still, eleven was just on this side of young, particularly for the guy._ Still… Looking down at his feet, Tobias asked almost sullenly, “Is this a plan that’s already in motion?”

Cabe nodded slowly. “In about three hours there is going to be a gray car pull into the garage.” Tobias’s eyes flew wide, he wasn’t even trying to stop his expression from showing his horror any more. “Inside there will be three eleven-year-old girls. You don’t have to marry all three, but you _have_ to choose at least one to marry tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” Tobias parroted faintly before protesting, “I can’t get married _tomorrow_. I have tests to run, and that new theory to rework, and—”

“—And you will always have another test or theory. That’s exactly my point, kid. You need to take a break every once in a while.”

“But Walter and M—”

“Walter and Mark have been going at the books, so to speak, pretty hard for the past six months, yeah. _You_ have been doing the same thing – on your own – since the day Peyton came down with the virus, over a year ago. It’s not good for you, and if getting you married a little early is how we curb that, then that’s what we’re going to do. You copy?”

Tobias looked away, but he nodded. “Yeah, I copy.” Stifling a sigh, Tobias barely glanced at Cabe as he asked, “Is that all? Can I go back to work now?”

Cabe’s lips pinched together as if Tobias had just somehow missed the entire point of what he was really trying to say. Tobias probably had, and willfully at that, but if Cabe was trying to say what he _thought_ he was, he didn’t want to understand in the first place. Regardless, Cabe nodded, and that was all that he cared about.

Beating a hasty retreat back to the mansion, Tobias’s thoughts were awhirl.

He pushed himself very hard in the search for a cure to the virus. He saw that, and he understood it, but he didn’t _mind_ it. Finding a cure was the most important thing in the world, and so he devoted his life to it. He didn’t know why that was so difficult to understand.

And he didn’t know why Cabe thought it was a good idea for him to marry early. He didn’t want a wife, let alone any future _children_! His work took up too much time for him to bother with that before he had to.

He’d heard Cabe, though. His impending marriage was already set in motion, happening in three hours whether or not he wanted it to. He’d seen enough while living on the street to realize that his real dilemma – the only real decision he had to make – at this point was: how many of the incoming girls was he going to make himself marry? He’d seen what could happen to girls who weren’t chose as brides from those gray vehicles – servitude was the best option; immediate death, the worst – and he wasn’t sure how to proceed now.

He knew already, going in, that it was going to be more than he could handle to have one wife, let alone three. But… _maybe there was another option…_ It wasn’t ideal – nothing that happened to a girl who had been caught by Gatherers was – but it was better than the worst alternative.

Despite his desire to go drown himself in work, Tobias doubled back to Cabe. “Is it possible to have the two girls that I don’t choose… maybe auctioned off from the nearest orphanage, like they do with some of those orphans?”

He hated the sound of the words as they came out of his own mouth, but, unfortunately, that didn’t change the fact that it was still one of the best options. Orphans who were auctioned off became servants, except for in very rare cases. Among an ocean of bad options, this was the girls’ best bet, so to speak.

Cabe’s eyebrows drew together in thought before he muttered, “I’ll make some calls, and see if I can’t get that to happen for you.”

“What were you planning on doing with them?”  Tobias asked, not sure whether he should feel apprehensive or merely curious.

“They were going to be transferred to a research facility.”

“For what purpose?” Tobias asked with a raised eyebrow. Human test subjects; that’s the only option he could come up with, but he _almost_ wanted to hear Cabe admit that for himself.

Instead Cabe replied slowly, “To assist with research.”

But his eyes had glanced slowly to the left, one idiotically easy-to-spot tell of a liar – at least a white liar.

“No,” Tobias said firmly. “If these girls are meant to be my responsibility, I want them to go to an orphanage.”

Cabe nodded, telling him again, “I’ll see what I can do.”

This time Cabe was the one to beat a hasty retreat back to the house, and Tobias followed at a slower gate, trying not to sulk. He knew Cabe believed he was only doing what he thought was best for him, but… he didn’t understand why he had to get married _now_. What was wrong with next year? Or the year after that?

And yet… Though he immersed himself in his work for the next two hours and fifty-five minutes, exactly as he’d wanted to, when the third hour rolled around, Cabe came down to the lab on the dot to retrieve him. They walked out the side entrance to the lab and straight into the conjoined garage.

Just as Cabe had promised, there was a gray sedan parked in the middle of the aisle. Two Gatherers were leaned against the hood of the car, keeping a close eye on the two servants who were standing nearby to take the chosen girl to her room.

Tobias’s stomach was doing its best to lurch. He swallowed, refusing to let it, and reminding himself that he’d already seen too much to be squeamish about this now.

With a there and gone glance at Tobias out of the corner of his eye – during which he possibly noticed the signs that his young charge was uncomfortable – Cabe shook the Gatherers’ hands, trying to start the necessary proceedings as quickly as he could. The older of the two Gatherers – both of whom appeared to be in their early twenties – opened one of the sedan’s back doors so that Tobias and Cabe could see inside the car. Three young girls with wide, glazed eyes, pale cheeks, and greasy hair stared back at them, looking pitifully like deer in headlights.

Tobias’s stomach definitely twisted then, and it was a struggle to keep his expression neutral. He turned his head away and looked Cabe as he declared, “I’ll marry the first one.”

He didn’t know which girl they would think he meant, and he didn’t care. Sitting there in that car, the girls were all the same – sick, drugged, scared, wretched, and desperate. Tobias just wanted this whole experience to be over, and it didn’t take a genius to deduce that the girls did too.

Cabe nodded to the servants standing nearby, instructing them in a low voice to bring “the blonde girl” to the house.

“Can I go now?” Tobias asked him flatly. _Surely they wouldn’t need him again until the actual wedding tomorrow, right?_

Cabe apparently thought the same thing, because he nodded, and though Tobias kept his gait to a walk, it was a fast walk as he made to leave the garage. Then, when he was nearly out of hearing range, he heard one of the Gatherers ask, “Do you have instructions regarding the other two?”

With his back to the man, Tobias was left to assume that Cabe must’ve shaken his head, because the first-generation answered, “No. I tried to get clearance to have them sent to an auction, but that didn’t fly, so… no. What happens to them is on you two.”

Tobias’s heart pounded in his chest, his eyes blowing wide as he froze just inside the garage doorway. He knew what that meant; they all did. Those girls might be dropped off at a brothel, but more than likely, having made the profit that they wanted, the Gatherers were just going to take them to the woods right outside the estate and put an end to them.

It took everything he had not to scream or puke then and there. Those two girls were going to die, and it was his fault. Everything that had happened to all three of the girls… all of that was because of him.

It wasn’t until the Gatherers car had left with them and the two girls inside, until the servants and Tobias’s… fiancée had left him and Cabe alone in the garage, that he was able to come back to himself enough to turn and face Cabe. Cabe, who was staring right back at him with sorrowful blue eyes swimming with emotions that even Tobias couldn’t categorize.

“You heard that, huh?” Cabe said flatly, and it really wasn’t a question.

Every word out of Tobias’s mouth came with the sharpness of a knife as he snapped, “You _promised me_ they would _live_.”

“No, I didn’t,” Cabe replied, his tone so mellow that Tobias was half tempted to snap his neck. “I promised you I would _look into_ an auction, and I did – numerous ways – but it didn’t pan out. I tried, son, but… it didn’t happen. I’m sorry for that, but I can’t change it.”

A series of curses came to mind, piling up on the tip of Tobias’s tongue, but in the end he only shook his head, nearly too disgusted to speak. “Whatever,” he muttered bitterly, before spinning and darting through the lab, taking the stairs to get to his bedroom just so that he didn’t even have to pause. He didn’t go to his bedroom once he reached the next level; he went to the small lab on the level instead. He’d always felt more at home there, hard at work, then he had in the luxurious surroundings of his bedroom.

But for once he couldn’t distract himself with work. How could he concentrate on curing people, saving lives, when he’d just condemned two to death?

* * *

_Tobias Curtis_

_February, Year Two (The next day)_

As a whole, Cabe and the geniuses appreciated efficiency. Get things done quickly, and then you can move onto the next thing, ultimately accomplishing more in the end. Yet, despite that, Cabe had Tobias and his fiancée – _he didn’t even know her name, hadn’t even paid attention to what she looked like; how stupid was this?!_ – wait until the next afternoon to get married. Tobias, for all of his still-growing inner turmoil, felt even worse about the entire thing when he finally remembered the wait was because she needed time to get the drugs her kidnappers had used out of her system.

Part of him felt like he should be there for her, watching over her like Cabe had probably been hoping for, but the other part of him rebelled against the idea of going anywhere near her. She represented something that he was never going to forgive himself for, he knew that already, and he wanted to prolong the reminder of that thing for as long as possible.

In the end, the next time he saw her was at their wedding when he went up to the second wives’ level, the place where Peyton’s family had once lived, and his now would. It was an odd, terrible feeling, almost surreal, and he didn’t even notice until they were all in the sitting room that _everyone_ else had come up with him. Walter, Megan, Mark, Cabe… they all knew, they were all there in the room as well… to witness his marriage.

He was wearing a suit, and standing between Cabe and a man that he didn’t know, could only assume was a minister, and waiting for a girl he didn’t know, but was going to marry regardless.

Yeah, definitely surreal.

But it couldn’t have been any better for her, he thought again as the door to the sitting room opened to admit the same two servants from yesterday. A tiny raven-haired girl, even younger than Tobias – _his fiancée’s domestic_ , he realized absently – and a twenty-year-old man – _a damned_ bodyguard _meant to ensure that his fiancée didn’t make a run for it_.

In between them walked another girl – _the_ girl – a blonde swathed in an ornate pile of white tulle. _The dress was hideous_ , Tobias thought privately, _but when she hadn’t been drugged the girl inside the dress was actually really pretty._

It was a nice thought, but not nice enough to cheer him up.

Cabe leaned closer to him, just enough to whisper in his ear, “Her name is Amy.” 

  _Well,_ he thought dryly, _at least he knew that now_. And then: _You know, for being a social norm, this is a really screwed up way of getting married._

All of it was, but that didn’t change the fact that this was happening regardless, no matter what either of them wanted.

He honestly wasn’t even sure how he made it through the wedding, let alone how she did. He didn’t even remember saying any vows, and he _knew_ that they’d used a version of vows where she didn’t speak at all. The only thing he remembered with any sort of clarity were the rings. The set that Cabe had passed to him were slender, silver, and plain – _a rich man’s version of cheap_ , his brain had translated unhelpfully. Amy’s hand in his had been ice cold and trembling as he’d slid the ring onto her finger, and he’d stopped touching her as quickly as possible.

And that was it. Without a kiss – _thank god –_ or a word from the bride, they were man and wife. Tobias Curtis was married to a pretty blonde named Amy that he didn’t even know.

The domestic and the bodyguard took Amy back to her room and Walter and Mark headed back down to the lab. Clapping him on the shoulder and waiting until he made eye contact to budge, Cabe followed the boys without a word.

Good thing, too, because Tobias was still tempted to break his neck over this whole affair.

Megan stayed longer than anyone else, hovering in the sitting room doorway as if she wasn’t sure what to do – talk to him, follow the boys, or – knowing her – try to help ease Amy. “You okay?” she asked softly, and Tobias hated the _age_ in her seven-year-old eyes.

He smiled, tipping his hat to her as he replied jovially, “Of course.”

She nodded, though her eyes said she didn’t believe him. He was startled when she changed the subject, pointing out, “The hat was an odd choice for a wedding, you know.”

“I know.” In some weird way, going outside of what was socially acceptable in a way as small as wearing a hat to his own wedding… it helped. He knew it was the only small rebellion he was going to get today, and so he’d chosen to wear it just because he _could._

Megan smiled, a little sadly, and he knew it was her way of extending an olive branch that he wasn’t in the mood to accept as she told him, “I like the hat.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

Then she left him alone, standing in the middle of his wife’s floor and fighting the urge to throw his wedding ring in the fireplace while he wondered what it meant that Megan had headed in the direction of Amy’s bedroom.


	4. Chapter 4

_Megan O’Brien_

_February, Year Two (Five days later)_

Megan was seven, not stupid. She’d known from the moment that Cabe had called her, Walter, and Mark into his sitting room and explained Tobias’s impending marriage that what was happening had to be horrific to both parties involved. Tobias was far too one-track-minded for this marriage to be his idea, and, well, Amy had been _kidnapped_. No one needed it explained to them why that might be traumatic.

She just hadn’t expected the whole thing to be _this_ difficult, not for Amy. Tobias certainly wasn’t helping anything either. So she found Cabe in his office, and, after waiting for him to dismiss a couple of security guards, slipped into the room herself.

“Can I talk to you?”

Cabe looked up from the accounts ledger that he’d just pulled out and nodded, setting it aside as quickly as he had gotten it out. “Of course, kiddo. What’s up?”

Megan took another step into the room, trying to figure out a way to explain, to even _begin_ to explain. “It’s Tobias. But mostly Amy. And Tobias.”

“I’m going to need you to be a little more elaborate, Megan,” he pointed out, looking torn between amusement and concern. “What about them?”

“Amy… is having nightmares. She has every night since I met her.”

Cabe glanced back down at the desk, muttering, “Those will go away with time.”

It was a reply that frustrated Megan just enough to cause her to snap, “But why is she even _here_?”

“Because she’s Tobias’s wife,” Cabe answered immediately, that question at least appearing to have surprised him.

“Is she really?” Megan asked, knowing she was being difficult, but hoping that she could get Cabe to understand in the end. “Because I _know_ I’ve spent _way_ more time with her than Tobias has since she got here. He hasn’t seen her _once_ since their wedding!”

“You don’t know that,” he said calmly.

“She _told_ me so! You set it up for her to have classes with my tutor and I, right?” Cabe nodded before Megan continued, “Well, I’ve been going back to her level with her after school, just so we both have someone to talk to. I’ve even been sleeping in her room with her, just so that someone is there to wake her up from her nightmares. We’re friends now, Cabe, but…” the fight went out of her as she said frankly, “As much as I’m thrilled to have a girl here, she’s not here for me; she’s here for Tobias. It’s not fair that he’s not there for here.”

Cabe sighed. “I should’ve done a better job of checking in on her, making sure she was settling in okay. I understand that. But _you_ have to understand that a lot of times, marriages like Tobias and Amy’s aren’t easy to begin with. It’ll happen in time. They’ll have kids, and that’ll put them on the same team, if nothing else. We all just have to give them some time here.”

Megan glared at him, snapping, “Why do you have to sound like such a _grownup_?!  What can we _do to_ make them happier together?”

“Give them space,” Cabe said firmly, and Megan wasn’t sure if that was an answer or an order. Megan growled as she turned towards the door, all but stalking away. “Hey,” Cabe called after her. “You’d better be over that little temper tantrum before movie night tonight; I don’t want your bad mood spoiling the couple of hours of downtime the boys will actually take.”

Megan was already in the elevator and headed back up to Amy’s level when she was struck with an idea so simple it really _was_ stupid. It was movie night. Tobias _would_ be there… so why couldn’t Amy be there, too? It was her right now that she lived here, wasn’t it?

 _It was,_ Megan decided, already in a better mood as she got off of the elevator and went to tell Amy about the longstanding plans for the evening.

* * *

_Tobias Curtis_

_February, Year Two (Later that day)_

Tobias really wasn’t sure what he had expected to see when he looked up from the textbook he’d brought to movie night. All he’d noted was that they had been waiting on Megan, and yet he’d heard two pairs of footsteps coming into the room as Megan whispered quietly to whoever had accompanied her.

_Had Cabe gotten around to assigning Megan a domestic? Were they all going to have a servant assigned to them now? He really should talk to Cabe about that; if he had a servant to do his bidding, he could devote more time to doing actual work on a cure._

But there was no domestic in sight when Tobias raised his eyes from the book – just Megan, coming into the room with a stubborn smile on her face, which she had aimed right at him, while she had her arm looped through Amy’s.

No, that wasn’t a domestic at all; it was his wife.

The very thought still made a strange sort of unpleasant queasiness curl in his stomach, but he did his best to push it aside as the girls, at Megan’s lead, squeezed themselves onto the couch in between him and Mark. Amy was _conveniently_ the one to sit beside him, but the first thing he noticed was that she was trembling again, and he had to wonder if her coming down here for the evening was even her idea. Megan could be a convincing little powerhouse when she wanted to be, he knew that much.

Experimentally, he smiled at Amy. Hesitantly, she returned the gesture, though it went nowhere near the nervousness in her eyes.

“So, what are we watching tonight?” Cabe asked the group.

“Jurassic World,” Mark suggested.

“Moana,” Megan called.

“A documentary?” from Walter.

On most days, that would be something Tobias could agree with the boy on, but in this case, he decided to go a different direction entirely. “How about something a little older, and funny, like the Three Stooges?”

That got a couple of raised eyebrows as Cabe turned to him and asked in surprise, “You want to watch a comedy series?”

“Just a couple of episodes,” Tobias suggested. Hoping against hope that Cabe would understand his point, he added, “Something to help us relax.”

Instantly, Cabe understood, and he agreed easily, “I like that logic. Three Stooges it is.”

As Cabe sat down and started the movie, Tobias felt a cold hand slip into his, and when he risked another look at Amy her smile, while still timid, seemed more genuine. He let his fingers curl around hers, and this time he didn’t let go.

She had a pretty laugh, Tobias noted, once she’d relaxed enough to actually laugh at the program in front of them. Three episodes into the evening, he discovered that his wife also snored, not loudly enough to disturb _everyone_ , just him. He tried to convince himself the snoring was cute too.

He couldn’t.

When that episode ended, Cabe turned everything off as Walter, Megan, and Mark went off to bed. Tobias, trapped by Amy’s hand in his as she pillowed her head on his shoulder, wasn’t sure what to do. Once he’d turned everything off, Cabe turned to the couch and smiled fondly at him. “See, it’s not so bad, is it?” Tobias stayed silent, halfway glaring at Cabe, who only offered, “Do you want to wake her up, or would you like me to carry her upstairs for you?”

“Carry her, please,” Tobias requested, deciding that the lesser amount of interaction with her sounded like a great plan.

Cabe came closer and slid his arms carefully underneath her, lifting her gently as he straightened. Yet, no matter how carefully Cabe had moved, Amy jerked violently awake as he picked her up – so violently that Tobias saw Cabe scramble not to drop her.

“Amy!” Tobias called, grabbing her shoulders. “Hey!”

Her eyes were wild and unseeing as she turned in his direction, her pupils an unnatural size.

Even while doing his best not to lose his hold on her, Cabe’s voice was gentle as he spoke, like he was attempting to pet a kicked dog. “Amy, kiddo, you’re safe; you’re safe. It’s only Cabe and Tobias.”

Her eyelids fluttered closed almost as suddenly as they had opened, and her head returned to resting on Cabe’s shoulder – asleep as if she’d never wakened.

“What in the names of the gods was that?” Tobias muttered, releasing his hold on her shoulders to run a hand through his hair.

Walking into the elevator with Tobias, Cabe revealed, “Megan did say that she’s been having nightmares.”

“How does she know that?”

“She’s been sleeping on Amy’s level, trying to help her adjust and keeping her company.”

“She went downstairs tonight, though, back to her room.”

Cabe glanced sideways at him, by Tobias’s guess keeping his voice purposefully level as he suggested, “She probably thought you were going to sleep with her.” Tobias shot him a disgusted look, and Cabe amended, “Not sex! Just… sleep _by_ her – keep her company.”

Tobias did his best not to let his thoughts show on his face, but he shoved his hands into his pockets with a sigh, thinking of the look in Amy’s eyes when she’d woken. Whether or not he had asked for it, he had a responsibility to Amy, he knew that. He didn’t like it, but he knew it. He fulfilled his obligation to search for a cure on a daily basis; if watching over Amy – trying to ward off the nightmares that he was inadvertently the cause of – was an obligation that he had to her… then what right did he have to not at least _try_ tonight?

Regardless of the sick, guilty twist in his stomach, Tobias stepped off of the elevator behind Cabe with his mind reluctantly made up for the evening. Following him into the bedroom that he assumed was his wife’s, he pulled the blankets down so that the first-generation could deposit her carefully on the bed.

Stepping backwards into the doorway – probably feeling as much like he didn’t belong there as Tobias did – Cabe gestured to the comm box on the wall as he muttered, “Have someone bring up whatever you need. And have a good night, Tobias.”

So saying, he left the boy standing silently by his wife’s bedside. Tobias slipped into the nursery next door so as not to wake Amy, expecting it to be musty with disuse. Instead, the room had clearly been aired out, with a hairbrush and toiletries bag on the vanity table and a robe hung on one of the bedposts.

_So this was where Megan had been staying. A wise choice, given that it shared a wall with Amy’s room – which would make it easier to hear and wake up if Amy had a nightmare._

He used the comm system to call for his things to be brought up, and ten minutes later he was slipping into bed beside Amy like he was afraid the mattress was made of nails.

It took him a while to fall asleep because he felt so out of place, and because he couldn’t remember the last time he’d shared a bed with someone. It was all so strange, but after an hour of doing his best not to toss or turn – and trying to ignore Amy’s persistent snoring – Tobias fell asleep.

Only to wake an hour later to a shrill scream as he was shoved out of the bed.

“Amy!” Tobias sprang onto his feet, shouting her name as he flipped on the bedside lamp. “It’s me; it’s only Tobias!”

“What are you doing?!” she gasped, clutching the blankets to her perfectly covered chest as they stared at one another with wide, startled eyes.

Her gaze was focused this time, at least, he noted, and decided to try giving her the honest answer. Raking a hand through his hair, he found himself avoiding her gaze – an obvious tell of discomfort that even your average Joe, or Jane, could discern, but he couldn’t seem to make himself meet her eyes as he admitted, “I heard you’ve been having nightmares, and I didn’t want you to… wake yourself up with them, you know.”

She blinked at him – _maybe she_ was _still too asleep for this_ – before she looked around the room with confusion in her eyes. “Where’s Megan?”

“She’s sleeping in her room tonight.”

He took a step closer to the bed as she muttered, “She’s been sleeping next door…”

“I know.” He took another step closer, his legs hitting the edge of the bed.

Staring at him, Amy asked slowly, “Are you saying you’re up here because you want to help me?”

Tobias shrugged, still staring mostly at his lap as he answered, “You’re here because of me, which means I have certain responsibilities to you. It’s nothing more or less than that.”

He watched her out of the corner of his eye, seeing the way her lips thinned just before she looked away from him with hurt swimming in her eyes. “Oh. Yeah… I get that.”

He’d hurt her. He’d been trying to help, but he’d hurt her instead. _Great_. “Amy…” he started, not sure what he was going to follow that up with in the first place. _He was only a kid; he wasn’t good at being a_ married man, _for pity’s sake!_

“No,” Amy was already shaking her head and lying back down. “It’s okay, Toby, I get it. It’s fine. I’ll be fine. You can leave if you want to; you don’t have to stay.”

 _Fine_. Something told him that women never meant that word when they used it…

He looked down at her, uncertain what he ought to do, before he found himself asking quietly, carefully, “Is it okay if I stay the rest of the night?”

She chewed on her lip, seeming surprised that he hadn’t sprang up and jumped ship at the first opportunity, but after a second she nodded. “Yeah. Tonight. But… if you don’t want to be here, don’t come back again until you have to.”

 _Until he had to_ …? Her ran the words through his head again as he laid back down beside her. And then he realized. _Oh. Oh, gods. She meant when they… had… kids. Gods._ He squeezed his eyes closed and turned his back to her as she had to him, stretching to turn the bedside lamp off again before he did his best to get comfortable.

After a minute, his eyes popped back open in the darkness. “Amy?”

“Yeah?” she asked quietly, sounding as if she was purposing trying not to be sullen.

“Did you call me ‘Toby’?”

“I…” She still wasn’t facing him in the darkness, but she sounded more uncertain than ever as she asked, “Is that okay? It’s just that… you don’t look as… stuffy as ‘Tobias’ makes you sound. I… guess I think ‘Toby’ suits you better. But I won’t call you that again if you don’t want me too.”

He smiled a very little bit to himself, pondering the nickname for a second before he said, “No, it’s okay. I like the sound of ‘Toby’. I think I might keep it up.”

It sounded like she was smiling as she said, “Okay. Good night, Toby.”

“Good night, Amy.”

This time it didn’t take him _as_ long to fall asleep… mostly because he felt as if she had… released him, given him a way out of most of the elements of their marriage.  It was pitiful in a way, he knew, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. Without a wife who would take up his time, he could continue to devote all of his time to finding the cure, and that was all he _really_ cared about.


	5. Chapter 5

_Happy Quinn_

_March, Year Two_

Orphanages sucked. Even at six years old, Happy Quinn knew that without a doubt. After all, she’d lived in one for two-thirds of her life up to this point – and not because of the normal “my parents are dead” reason, either. No, her father was the one who had gone mostly drunk and a little crazy when his sixteen-year-old wife died giving birth to Happy, and that had culminated in him abandoning his only child at an orphanage two years later during one of his more lucid moments.

But this guy, as much as she _did not_ trust him… he was offering her a great new place to live, and a space of her own. The size of the space didn’t really matter, anything would be an upgrade from the single bunk that she shared with two other girls, but by looking at him, she had to guess that he was rich.

And all this man, Cabe Gallo, wanted in return was for her to come work for his think-tank of geniuses – other people who were as weird as she was? Happy couldn’t find the downside here…

And she didn’t like that fact.

“Why me?” she asked, arms crossed as she stared him down, eye to eye thanks to the fact that he was sitting and she refused to.

“Because you’re a genius, kid; that’s the only qualifications anyone needs to become one of my guys.”

“I’m not anybody’s guy, in fact I’m a girl.”

“I care about the brain you bring to the table, not the body.”

“So why not find a different brain?”

“Because I was pointed towards yours first. The government tracks kids like you, and when I called them up saying I wanted a specific skillset, they suggested you, so here I am.”

There was so much in that last sentence that she wanted to comment on, but she wasn’t sure where to start.

“I think, then,” _Given how he was dodging the question she was trying to get an answer to._ “The most relevant question is what you’re looking for in a new member of your think-tank?”

Happy looked at him expectantly, but Gallo actually chuckled dryly, asking in amusement, “What is this, a job interview?”

She didn’t even blink. “I want to know what I’m getting into,” she replied, her tone implying that ought to be obvious.

“Well, so do I.”

Happy raised her eyebrows. “You wanna know about me?” she asked with a sardonic edge to her tone.

He looked like he thought he might make her cry as he said gently, “Sure, I do.”

She rolled her eyes. Crossing her arms over her chest, she obliged him flatly. “I’m not a good team player, I don’t trust you or anyone else, and I’m not afraid to tell you or anyone else exactly what I think about… everything.”

“Good.” Gallo nodded sharply, and for the first time Happy actually froze.

This time she did blink at him. “What do you mean, ‘good’?”

“I mean that I want fresh, watchful eyes on my team. Things have peen pointed out to me recently about the members of my household that make me think that I haven’t been there enough for them –that I’m missing things that I need to know about.”

“You want a snitch, then,” Happy broke in.

Gallo winced. “I think I prefer the term ‘I want _someone to be my eyes_ – and ears’, actually. But more than that, I want someone who’s capable of bringing the team together and getting them to _act_ like a team.”

Happy snorted instantly. “You’ve got the wrong girl for that.” A new thought came to mind, and her lip curled in disgust at the idea as she requested, “Please tell me you don’t want me for this just because I’m a girl.” _Because if he was looking for someone who would be maternal, she was not it._

“I don’t want you just because you’re a girl. I told you; I want you in my think tank because you’re a genius.”

“I still think you’ve got the wrong person.”

“I don’t think so, and I’m willing to take my chances. I guess the most relevant question is… are you?”

After a beat of silence passed, Happy nodded. She was already planning exit strategies and escape routes, a plan B, C, D, and E, but she agreed and within the hour she was leaving the orphanage with Gallo.

During the – chauffeured – drive back to his place, he sat across from her and explained the operation that he and his think tank-tank had going. While she could _understand_ what he was saying – he used very little words, probably because she got the feeling he didn’t entirely understand all the concepts himself – she still wasn’t sure how she could fit into all of this. She was a _mechanical_ genius; she’d spent most of her life playing maintenance woman at the orphanage, and while she was willing to do her best to help them find a cure – _of course_ she was – she wasn’t sure how much help she could be. By the time they’d parked in the garage of Cabe Gallo’s mansion, though, she’d decided that if this was the life she got to live in exchange for her assistance, she would be more than fine with that.

“Do you want to meet your teammates first, or get settled in a bedroom for the night and meet them in the morning?” he asked her as they climbed from the limousine he’d driven to the orphanage.

“Bed now,” she replied succinctly.

It was late, and Happy had always been more at ease when she was alone, without some unknown first generation trying to explain her new world to her. Better to explore it all for herself.

So Gallo left her at the entryway of the mansion with a maid, and that was the last she saw of him for the evening. However, she wasn’t to get what she wanted apparently, because when she and the maid stepped off of the elevator on the next level up, a dark-eyed boy poked his head out of one of the first rooms along the hallway, curiosity instantly filling them as he saw her.

“Who are you?” he asked, something about him instantly setting Happy’s nerves on edge. “If you were just another servant from an orphanage you wouldn’t have stopped off here before you were wearing your uniform.”

“I’m a genius. Who are you?”

“Mark Collins.” The boy’s smile widened as he added, “You must be a new member of the think-tank. Cabe didn’t tell us we were getting another member. We’ve already got myself, Walter, and Toby as the geniuses, and Amy and Megan just because. Would you like to come meet us?”


	6. Chapter 6

_Happy Quinn_

_April, Year Two_

Just like that, Happy Quinn found herself in the middle of a terribly dysfunctional family. Toby – studious, all but silent, and broody – stayed to himself in his own corner of the lab, Happy claimed her own corner, and Mark and Walter gravitated to one another like magnets – sometimes attracting and sometimes opposing.

The more Happy observed her new research partners, though, the more she wondered if she didn’t see what Cabe had referenced when they’d first met. Things that needed to be overseen and dealt with even though he couldn’t necessarily be there to do it all himself.

Happy wasn’t great with people, but she was an ace with machines. So she looked at the other members of the household as a machine. In her mind’s eye, she took the machine apart, viewing each person as a gear and observing how they interconnected – or didn’t connect, for that matter.

Cabe, she decided within her first week in the mansion, wasn’t actually a problem. He’d just been fumbling for too long to fix the problems that did exist, and had more often than not only succeeded in creating _additional_ problems.

He’d started the think-tank and brought in Toby and Walter to solve the _big_ problem – the virus. The way Megan had told her the story, the two boys had then proceeded to get along like cats and dogs. Not a great partnership.

So Cabe had brought in a third boy to try and… mix it up, give them some middle ground to work with. That boy was Mark, and while Happy had quite a few thoughts on Mark, all Megan said was that Toby had come to feel even more ganged-up on, and Mark and Walter had become an untouchable island unto themselves.

 _Then_ Cabe had tried to fix that feeling by giving Toby a different sort of partner who would be in his corner – a wife – and that had created an entirely different set of problems that Happy didn’t even want to go near.

That was the first issue that Megan had been told about – courtesy of Toby’s wife – and she’d instantly gone to Cabe. Since then, though, Amy had come to Megan and asked her to leave the issue alone, and so it had been left alone, much as Megan didn’t like it.

Megan had given her that information dump on Happy’s second day, and it was armed with that that Happy had begun to observe and construct her mental team-machine.

So where did that leave her?

In taking apart the team machine, she tucked the pieces that were Cabe, Amy, and eventually Toby into a mental box to consider later, then looked at what was left. Walter and Mark were one problem in and of themselves. They went on deadly week-long science benders together – “going down the rabbit hole,” Toby informed her – and the first time Happy saw them doing so, her first thought was why Megan – Walter’s adoring older sister – didn’t stop them.

She asked Toby once he’d explained to her what Walter and Mark were doing in the first place.

“Cabe hasn’t given her a key to the lab; we do important work here, and he doesn’t want her to mess something up.”

Happy’s eyebrows flew upward. “Honestly?” Toby nodded, and that was all it took for Happy to make her way outside, where she’d last seen Cabe heading. If Cabe really wanted her to help fix the issues in his think-tank, Happy was pretty sure she’d just found a quick fix that could have some pretty awesome ramifications.

“Where’s Cabe?” Happy called to a passing security goon.

He pointed her on her way, and she found Cabe on the far western side of the estate, wandering along the gated fence. “Hey, kiddo,” he greeted her amicably.

“Did you mean it when you said you wanted my opinion on the think-tank?” she asked briskly, getting straight to the point.

He drew up short and stood looking at her, realizing she meant business. “Yeah, I did. Why? Do you have any ideas?”

“Enable Megan’s keycard with access to the lab.”

He looked at her strangely. “I… don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Why not?!” Happy shot back in exasperation. “You said you want me to watch the team, give you a fresh perspective, and help you solve their issues – all of which are pretty close to interpersonal, from what I’ve seen in the past month. And from what I’ve seen, right now Megan could do all of that – and probably better than I ever could!”

“You know,” Cabe said slowly. “You’re right about a couple of things. You _have_ only been here a couple of months.” Happy stiffened, already seeing where this was going to end up. “And Megan probably is our best option when it comes to ‘interpersonal’ issues. But she’s not a genius, so she really isn’t a part of the team, which means that she’s none of your concern. She has nothing to do with any of the issues directly, so things are staying as they are. She doesn’t get access to the lab for a few more years, at least.”

Happy’s jaw clenched so hard her teeth hurt. She was trying to do what he’d asked her to; she was trying to fulfill her role, her entire _purpose_ for being here, but it wasn’t a role she was well-suited for. She was trying to prove her worth to the man in charge as well as she could, and here he was, trampling her efforts.

“Fine,” she said flatly, turning back towards the house without another word.

_Maybe she just wouldn’t put forth the effort to help, then._

She was a stubborn kid, and she kept the thought firmly in mind even when – starting the very next morning – a construction crew went to town on the wall between the lab and the garage. By the end of the week, Happy had a section of the garage all to herself, positioned right next to the lab, one more workstation in sight of all of the others. She was pretty sure it was Cabe’s version of an apology of sorts for upsetting her, but she wasn’t willing to go back to dealing with people just because he’d given her something nice.

As the months wore on, though, something between her conscience and a growing sense of annoyance got the better of her. Over half the time, Walter and Mark were unreachable, in their own little world in a way that was _not good_. The duo needed babysitting regardless of who stepped up to become the babysitter. It was nothing for them to go down the rabbit hole for six days and “reemerge” only on Saturdays, when Walter knew Megan was expecting them at movie night.

More recently, they’d even started to miss movie nights, and Happy didn’t like it. Walter still came _most_ of the time, but Mark had all but abandoned the “family nights.”

One night, she finally saw what was _really_ happening between Walter and Mark, though.

Knowing that she had a few minutes before they were all supposed to be on Cabe’s level, she had chosen to finish up the soldering she’d been working on. Toby – a nickname he’d adopted not long before Happy had come, apparently – had left the lab about ten minutes before, so it was only her, Mark, and Walter on the level. When she switched off her torch, the only sound in the whole level was the murmuring of the boys.

 _Talking to themselves_ , she thought – assumed – automatically. They did that a lot. She told herself it was more annoying than it was concerning, and today she was in just a bad enough mood to mean it.

Then she noticed a couple of things as she rounded the corner, and concern once again overcame her annoyance.

Walter and Mark weren’t muttering to themselves; they were all but arguing with one another. More accurately, Mark was goading Walter.

“We have to go,” Walter insisted.

“No, we don’t. This is more important, and we’re so _close_. If you want to go, go, but you’re better than that… or at least I am. At this rate, you’re going to go upstairs to be with your _sissy_ and _Cabe_ , and I’m going to crack this while you’re gone, and your contribution will be as good as useless.”

Happy caught a growl in the back of her throat before the boys could realize she was there. So, that was why Walter had begun – by all appearances – to care less about his sister’s presence in his life, and _far_ more about the work he and Mark did.

Every one of them, in a generation of children who were dropping like flies, were afraid of being useless. Especially here, in a think tank meant to save the world. They couldn’t be useless, not to Cabe or the household or the search for a cure. If they didn’t serve _some_ purpose here, they ran into the risk of being tossed back out into the street or possibly even replaced.

Mark had clearly picked up on that insecurity in Walter, and now he was picking at it. _How had she missed that… and how long had it been happening, exactly?_

Happy took a step closer, really seeing the scene now instead of only overhearing it. That was when she noticed the second thing, a small thing, but it spoke volumes. There were two bowls of fruit on the worktable, one shoved aside by each of the boys. Toby had to have brought them down earlier, but one bowl – the one nearest Mark – was completely untouched, and the other had only been nibbled on. Given how long it had been since the duo had eaten a proper meal, that wasn’t a good sign.

She took another step closer, swallowing her anger with difficulty before she asked, trying to keep her tone light, “Are you ready to go upstairs?”

Mark didn’t even glance her way; if anything his gaze sharpened upon Walter. Under his best friend’s gaze, Walter seemed barely able to look at her, guilt and persistent distraction in his flickering eyes as he informed her quietly, “I’m going to stay down here. Mark’s right. We’re close to figuring this out.”

“A cure to the virus, you mean?” she asked with a barely-there sarcastic edge. They all knew that wasn’t the case.

Walter shook his head, turning his back to her as he muttered, “Something else.”

And that quickly he was sucked back down the rabbit hole alongside Mark.

She stared at them, thinking, not for the first time, that Mark Collins was as good as a lost cause, but Walter had to know better and simply felt like he had to prove… whatever it was he felt he had to prove to Mark.

But they all felt that they had something to prove, and Walter was the only one who could understand he was taking it too far while he did it anyway.

Happy still wasn’t sure whether she should let her anger or her concern take control of what she did next. She tamped down all of it instead, and marched into the elevator alone. Cabe, Toby, and Amy were already in Cabe’s family room when she stepped off of the elevator, and they all looked to her as she came in.

Toby, sitting on the couch beside Amy, raised his eyebrows to wordlessly ask the question that Cabe voiced. “Are Walter and Mark coming?”

 “Nope.” Happy flopped down in an armchair, voice flat. “They’re working still.”

“Of course they are,” Toby muttered.

Somehow, Cabe’s eyes flashing with concern only managed to upset Happy more.

Megan came off of the elevator a minute later and took a cursory glance around before she deduced flatly as her shoulders slumped forward, “He’s not coming up, is he?”

Happy shook her head, and Amy frowned sympathetically, holding a hand out to Megan to invite her to sit beside her.

Megan obliged, and Cabe, seeing all of the downtrodden expressions, added, “Oh, come on, it can’t be that bad, can it?”

His tone was light and disbelieving, and Happy had to literally bite her tongue to keep from telling him that, yes, it was. Cabe was busy and distracted; she hated it, but she understood it, and she could take care of this situation herself if she had to.

“Don’t we have a movie to watch?” she asked.

Yet she was so distracted by her thoughts of Walter and Mark that she couldn’t even had said what they watched.

After the movie, after Toby had walked Amy back to her room, he found Happy in the lab on their level of the mansion. She was cleaning the taken-apart guts of an antique motorcycle, quiet busywork that she was all too happy to get lost in, and even in the silence Toby had to say her name to get her to acknowledge his presence.

“What are we going to do about Walt and Mark?” he asked instantly, getting straight to his point.

“I tried,” Happy declared from between gritted teeth, glaring from underneath her eyebrows at the boy who had dared to interrupt her seething over the very thing he wanted to talk about.

“I didn’t say otherwise,” Toby replied, raising his hands in surrender even as his tone stayed annoyingly level. “And I wouldn’t. I know better. But clearly what we’re doing – you and me tag-teaming them – isn’t working. We need to try something different.”

“Try _what_?!” she demanded, throwing down the rag in her hand as she let more of her frustration leak out.

It sounded more like whining as she spoke, she knew that, but for the first time since she’d left the orphanage she didn’t care. She was _six_ – _only six_ – and she wanted to act like it. She shouldn’t have to babysit two of her peers!

But she did have to. Or she certainly felt like she had to – like in a roundabout way that was what she’d signed up for in exchange for being taken from the orphanage. Besides, even if Mark put her on edge, Walter… didn’t. In her own way, she really _had_ come to care about them and what happened to them.

So she sucked in a breath, steadying herself to actually hear what Toby had to say as he suggested, “What if you and I each permanently… adopted one of them?” Happy arched an eyebrow, asking wordlessly for a further explanation, so Toby leaned against the edge of her worktable with a sigh, admitting, “I want to get a closer look at Mark, and right now he won’t… let me in. I just feel like something isn’t right with him, and I want to know what. If we quit tossing them back and forth and each concentrate on one, maybe they’ll listen to us.

“We all already know that Walter and I don’t always get along, so it makes more sense in the first place for you to take care of him, if I can use that term. He likes you anyway; Mark…”

“Doesn’t.” Happy filled in the blank in his verbal deluge of an explanation, shrugging carelessly to make it seem like Toby’s last sentence hadn’t caught her off guard as much as it actually had. She wasn’t used to the idea of someone liking her – disliking her, sure, but not _really_ thinking positively of her.

Despite her attempt at flippancy, the look in Toby’s eyes said he’d caught onto her thoughts anyway.

“Shut up,” she muttered, hating when he read people like he was her just now.

“I didn’t say anything,” he answered so coolly that Happy wanted to kick him in the shin. “Anyway. You willing to try this out; you take Wally and I’ll watch Mark?”

She nodded agreeably, already thinking privately that Toby had assigned himself the raw end of the deal.

But he had asked for it, so she went with it… and found herself getting more worried for Walter than ever before. Focusing on Mark might’ve helped Toby, but seeing everything that Walter _wasn’t_ doing for himself was making her afraid for him. He was halfway starved, and probably just as dehydrated.

Yet Mark urged him on, into places inside his head where Happy had an even harder time reaching him.

She noted Toby started to look more… frazzled, too, between trying to keep up with his own research while babysitting Mark.

One month into this new “divide and conquer” method of Toby’s, Happy found herself _literally_ dragging Walter away from Mark’s worktable by his shirtsleeves while he muttered to himself about a theorem that wasn’t within her area of expertise. By the look of him, she probably wouldn’t have been able to understand him even if he was simply mumbling about monkey wrenches. Dragging him into her part of the garage, she pushed him down into a chair that she’d brought over earlier, and sat down in one opposite him, their knees touching.

Just as she reached for the plate she’d made, fully intending to see that Walter ate one way or the other, there was an echoing crash from Mark’s worktable, and she whipped around to see that Mark had taken Toby’s tablet and flung it across the lab. Toby, who had been using the device to explain something to Mark, gaped at the boy for a long moment.

“Are you _crazy_?!” Toby yelled at him. “That thing costs as much as most people make in their lifetimes where I come from!”

“Only the people who are too stupid to matter,” Mark answered, turning back to the work that Toby apparently had no hope of dragging him away from.

“You know what?” From where she sat, Happy could clearly see the frustration and anger on his face as he spoke. “I’m done with this. Do what you want, Mark; starve yourself if you’d rather, because you’re right – _some people_ are too stupid to matter.”

So saying, he stalked to his tablet where it lay on the floor, picked it up, and left the lab. Irritated and fed up in her own right, Happy looked between Walter and Mark, trying to decide what to do now that she was alone down here with them. Sighing, she stood and walked over to Mark’s work table.

“Maybe you should go apologize to him.”

“I’m not wrong.”

“Yes, you were – and you still are!”

“No, he merely let’s emotions cloud his judgements and actions while I rightly allow logic and natural selection to dictate mine.”

“What? What is that even supposed to mean?!  And what does it have to do with _natural selection_?”

“We’re smart; normals aren’t. We’ll survive – prosper, even – but normals won’t. Because of his emotions, Toby refuses to accept this. We’ll find a cure and live; they won’t. It’s stupid that he refuses to see this, to accept it for the fact that it is.

“And what makes him even less tolerable is the fact that he somehow thinks he’s better than us!”

Happy opened her mouth to say something – what, she wasn’t sure; whatever she could think of to stem the ridiculous ramblings coming out of Mark – but he was already too far gone. It didn’t matter if she was there or not, he would’ve kept talking, she recognized that much from the glazed, snapping look in his eyes. So she kept quiet and let him run out of steam.

“He’s the dumbest person in the lab,” Mark continued, though it was sounding more and more like a rant. “But he’s older than the rest of us and he’s been here the longest, and it’s like he thinks he’s better than us because of it. Or at least he thinks he’s in charge down here, and that’s stupid – and if there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s stupidity.”

Mark was mostly a rambling loudmouth, Happy understood that. He was unquestionably brilliant, but he was arrogant and manipulative and degrading; she’d learned that too. He had very little use for anyone besides Walter – and sometimes Megan, when he wanted to, in a way that never failed to set Happy’s nerves on edge.

As a mind, Mark was _nearly_ irreplaceable, but as a human being, he was nearly _unbearable._ Or something worse, as Happy had tried to explain to Cabe in the past.

Despite all of that, Mark was still one of the few people Happy had in her little world, and she didn’t really want to see him self-destruct or starve himself.

She just… couldn’t deal with him anymore, not at this second.

She turned to head back to her space on the edge of the garage, saying over her shoulder, “You should still apologize.”

He didn’t respond, probably hadn’t even registered her words, and she was too irritated and baffled by his crap to try and tell herself it didn’t matter this time.

Happy was so lost in her own thoughts, she was already halfway to her destination before she saw that Walter wasn’t there waiting for her where she’d left him. A quick glance showed that he had slipped off to his own work station, puzzling out whatever it was he’d been muttering about.

The plate she’d made for him remained untouched.

It probably was a big deal, but it shouldn’t have been the final straw of the day that it became in her mind. She saw red.

Forgetting about the boys, she went and instead started disassembling one of the motorcycle engines she kept around for destressing.

Walter and Mark didn’t eat or sleep that day.

* * *

 The next day, she tried again – with Walter, anyway, Toby had apparently meant it – at least for the time being – when he’d said he was done trying to reach Mark, and Happy had trouble enough trying to draw Walt out. So she kept her energy focused on Walter, where she knew she at least had a chance of making a difference. For now, she had grown to feel like she didn’t have a choice but to leave Mark adrift at sea.

Walter, at least, sometimes showed signs of wanting to be drawn back to shore.

So she had a bowl of macaroni made and took it down to Walter, all but force-feeding him even as he worked at Mark’s side. Finally, finally he ate what she put, literally, in front of his face.

When he was done eating, Happy stood from the chair that she’d dragged over to Mark’s worktable, looking hesitantly, almost grudgingly, at the sandy-haired boy as she said his name. He didn’t respond, but she persisted in her question, asking, “Do you want me to bring you something to eat?”

Still Mark acted as if he hadn’t even heard her – experience told her it was pretty likely that he hadn’t – and she had to bite back a swell of anger at being ignored. Again. She forced herself to mentally shrug it off – at least she tried – and walk away.

Leaving the empty bowl in a place where the attendants could find it, Happy did the one last thing she could think of. She went and talked to Cabe about Mark again. Only for her to walk away feeling ignored.

Again.

Thus a pattern developed. Happy babysat Walter – a child caring for a child – and at a loss of what else to do, pestered Cabe about Mark.

She was only six, and, genius or not, she couldn’t think of any other way to help him. She felt that the boy was _beyond_ her help and she was doing her best to get Cabe to help him instead.

And _months_ later, she was somewhere beyond relieved to realize that Cabe had started personally coming down to the lab to see the situation for himself. By then, the boys’ unhealthy state was hard to miss. Under Happy’s watch, Walter only looked _half_ starved, but most days she’d started wondering how Mark even managed to stay upright.

It wasn’t just that Mark looked physically sick, though he clearly still did; it was that as time went on under this new routine, he did the impossible and became even more unreachable. He muttered to himself constantly, almost always seeming to forget even Walter’s existence, and Happy wasn’t sure she could remember the last time she’d seen him outside of the lab. He was pale and gaunt, and the best any of them knew to do for him was leave food and water on his worktable in hopes that he would graze on it rather than totally starving himself.

He was seriously, deathly sick, and there was no more denying it. Happy only wondered if the denial hadn’t stopped too little too late.

Cabe, however, as was usually the case, held out more hope than she did. He had noticed Toby’s retraction from Mark, and had recently been pressuring him to examine Mark from a physical, medical perspective.

For multiple reasons, Happy didn’t see much of a point to such an examination, and clearly Toby agreed with her. Toby was their practical medical expert, yes, but Mark’s growing issues obviously weren’t rooted in the physical. His sickness was mental, and while it was also true that Toby understood psychology better than any of the others ever hoped to, he had long sworn that Mark was far beyond his reach.

Still, Cabe insisted, and, as always, Toby eventually gave into the first-generation.

As soon as Toby agreed to it, the more the examination was discussed, the bigger an ordeal it seemed to become, the more preparation it seemed to require.

At first, Toby tried to simply approach Mark and draw him away from his work like a normal human being. It didn’t work, and while Toby was irritated – apparently, permanently so, not that she blamed him in the least – even he was now concerned enough that he persisted.

Happy, Walter, and Cabe all tried to help get Mark to a place where he would allow Toby to look him over, but nothing worked. Toby even suggested letting Megan down into the lab to try and talk to him.

“He was pretty friendly with you a while back, right?” Toby asked her.

They were all sitting in Cabe’s family room after a movie night; Mark no longer attended, but he’d come up in conversation.

“Yeah,” Megan replied hesitantly. “But I haven’t seen him in ages. If you guys can’t get through to him, what makes you think I would? I mean… I could try, but—”

“No.” Walter’s tone was nothing if not stubborn as he spoke up. “Mark’s my friend, but he’s changed – is still changing – and I don’t want you to get hurt, Megan.”

“Walter, son,” Cabe began. “We’ve tried everything else but physically _forcing_ him to let Toby check him out. Letting Megan in might be our only other option.”

“ _Excuse me_?” Happy asked, her tone suddenly livid enough that every eye in the room turned to her. Megan even went so far as to put a hand on her arm as Happy saw red.

She had suggested that – had _fought_ Cabe for it – for a long while well before the situation had gotten this far out of hand, and now, _now_ Cabe wanted to try it?! She forced herself to take a deep, shuddering breath to calm down as Megan squeezed her hand and Walter snapped at Cabe, “Then use physical force!”

“Walter…” Megan started softly, looking like she hated the idea, but Walter was right; she had no _real_ idea of what Mark had devolved into.

Happy hesitantly put her hand on Megan’s. “Walt’s right. Mark’s already getting more and more upset with how frequently we’ve tried to interrupt his work and routine. What if bringing a whole new person into the lab is what makes him snap for good? No one here wants him to lose it on you.”

“Then what are you going to do next?” Amy asked uncertainly, her hand tangled with Toby’s as they sat together on the couch. “If Mark’s getting progressively worse, shouldn’t this checkup happen soon before his issues… progress further?”

“Yes,” Happy answered firmly, and didn’t care who disagreed with her. In her opinion, someone should’ve looked at Mark – and possibly even Walter too, if for slightly different reasons, come to think of it – before she had even come here.

“Then how are we going to make it happen?” Megan asked, looking around at them all for an answer before her gaze fastened onto Cabe in particular.

The first generation sighed, a weight seeming to fall onto his shoulders as he realized that they really had run out of options. “We’re going to have to physically force him.”

So they did. The very next morning, Cabe and a couple of his security guards came down into the lab. All it took was one glance from Cabe in his direction and Toby pulled a tray of medical – proper doctor’s – equipment from a shelf underneath his worktable. He didn’t move away from his spot yet, though, waiting to see what would happen first.

Smart, probably, Happy decided, because she couldn’t see this going well. Definitely not at first, and she wasn’t exactly holding out hope for Mark to have a change in opinion midstream either.

Still. Not even she – not even _Toby_ – had thought the situation would go as far south as it did.

At first, when Cabe and the guards approached Mark, things went okay. Mark was smart enough to do the math; he knew he was well and truly outnumbered and overpowered this time. He was angry about it – very _clearly_ angry – but compliant and cooperative.

So much so that the security guards stepped away as Toby moved in to examine Mark.

Everyone tensed, as if on some unanimous instinct – and with good reason, as it turned out.

It happened so quickly that Happy wasn’t sure she saw it properly, but one second things were fine – tense, but fine – and the next second Mark was swinging a kitchen knife at Toby, and a second later Cabe had Mark pinned to the floor while Toby staggered backwards, pale and clutching his shoulder.

Audio confirmation of what she had just seen – Walter screaming, her own yelling, the guards and Cabe shouting as Toby cried out – seemed to hit her a second after her visual intake. It was a very strange slow-motion effect for that moment, but the rushing back of sound – a lot of it at once – made it all seem to hit her with the force of a truck.

Happy’s gaze followed the knife first as it was wrenched from Mark’s hand to skim across the lab floor until one of the guards snatched it up and dropped it into his pocket for the moment.

That concern taken care of, Happy whipped towards Toby, calling to where he’d propped himself awkwardly up in a corner by himself until the chaos was over, “You okay?”

Toby was pale, but he gasped out, “Sure. Of course. Yeah. It’s only my shoulder he managed to slice, only my shoulder bleeding profusely! But he was aiming for my neck!” Toby turned utterly ashen, and his legs seemed to give out on him as he slid down to sit on the floor, muttering repeatedly, “He actually tried to kill me! He actually tried to _kill me_!”

Cabe and Happy both looked at Toby then, but as Happy moved to go closer to him, to make sure he didn’t actually pass out, one of the guards securing Mark snapped at her, “Will you shut him up!”

The entire room came into her notice again as her focus zoomed out, as it were. The moment of danger and chaos was passing, but it was still loud.

Because Walter was still screaming.

Cabe looked at her, meeting her eyes for a moment during which she felt far too mature and responsible and _called upon_. He left a seething Mark in the guards’ capable hands and went to check on Toby himself; Happy knelt down in front of Walter.

He had slid to the floor like Toby had, she noted, though he managed to look far more upset than the boy who had actually been cut. His hands were covering his face, as if he could block out what had just happened – what his best friend had just done – but he couldn’t, they all knew that, and so he was screaming, chanting “no” over and over.

“No! No! No!”

Happy _really_ wished Cabe would let Megan down here to help her brother. She even spared a thought to wonder if Amy – who was equally barred – could’ve helped Toby right now. She kind of doubted it, but it was a thought.

As it was, she was the only one down here to calm Walter at the moment, to murmur to him kindnesses that came far from naturally to her. But she tried her best, prying his hands away from his face as she said his name. Hovering in his personal space so that he could hear her past his own racket, she insisted, “You need to stop screaming. I need you to stop screaming. It’s okay. Toby’s okay. Everything’s okay.”

Walter’s voice dropped suddenly to a quiet whimper as he said, “Nothing’s okay! They’re going to… to make Mark go away now.”

Happy frowned, but only at Walter’s distress. Even she wasn’t heartless enough to say that she hoped he was right.

* * *

It wasn’t a Saturday night, but Cabe gathered them all in his sitting room anyway that evening. Toby was moving slowly, pain meds hindering his usually sharp wit while a small mountain of gauze and tape and stitching hindered the movements of his shoulder and arm. Amy clung to him fiercely, even though she was as pale and as silent as the day Happy had met her.

Amy had nearly lost her husband today, and Happy wondered absently how that idea was settling into the gaping holes of their odd, disjointed marriage.

When they came into the room, Walter was clinging to Megan as much as Amy was to Toby. He, after all, had probably lost his best friend today.

Because Mark was notably nowhere to be found.

As the other four kids squished onto the couch, Happy dropped onto the floor at Walter’s feet.

Cabe sat across from them and spoke in a calm, measured voice, explaining to them what Walter had already told Happy to expect. After today’s “display,” Mark had been deemed “unsafe.” He had been taken to live in a special hospital in New York where he would be “happier,” and “healthier,” and “it was going to be better for everyone this way.”

Happy didn’t disagree, but with Walter trembling silently behind her – a reaction she suspected only she and Megan noticed – she didn’t say anything.

It was only once she was in bed for the evening that she thought to wonder what purpose she was supposed to serve at the mansion now. She had originally been brought in to help solve the team’s issues, and now that the main issue – Mark – was gone, would she still be necessary or, more importantly, wanted here? She had a feeling that Walter would even himself out without Mark’s destructive influences, but where would that leave her in the eyes of the man who ran the house?

Unless he had no better plan then trying to let _her_ “fix” Toby and Amy’s unusual marriage…?


	7. Chapter 7

_Toby Curtis_

_Year Three_

When it came to the marriages of the wealthy, Toby understood that these days there was a measure of logic applied to matrimony. Well, there was a purpose to it these days, anyway. Pro-science people were afraid – perhaps justly – of the human race dying out. To contradict that fear and prevent its realization, kids – which was really all they were – married young and had children – sometimes as many as possible – as soon as possible. It made Toby uncomfortable in ways he didn’t know how to properly explain, but he knew that was the way of his world.

He just hadn’t expected Cabe to – albeit very politely, awkwardly demand children of him as soon as it was possible.  Because he was… you know… twelve, as was Amy. And the idea of him being a father was just… weird. Very possibly, it was outright _bad_ … and yet… the word of their father-figure, of Cabe, was as good as law in his eyes. And, really, Cabe never did anything he didn’t think was in their best interests.

So when Cabe took him for another walk outside – Toby was _really_ starting to become wary of those – and explained to him what was expected now that puberty had hit both Toby and Amy, he wasn’t sure how to process it. He just knew that they had to make it happen.

“Your mind is invaluable,” Cabe reminded him by way of an explanation that Toby was only halfway registering. “And I know it’s not a sure thing, but that’s exactly why I feel I’ve _got_ to push this – to increase the odds, so to speak – for the sake of the whole world. Toby… if, gods forbid, you die before you find a cure, I want to increase the odds of having brilliant minds around to continue your work. Do you understand?”

Toby nodded. _Of course he did_. The only reason he didn’t try fighting Cabe on the idea was because the other man looked concerned for him just by bringing the idea up. But he was doing it anyway.

Because he thought it was for the best.

And Cabe’s word was law, right? _At least,_ Toby reminded himself wearily, _Cabe was a just lawmaker._

That did not make it any easier for him to slip up to his wife’s floor that evening – on a Tuesday, not the usual Saturday nights that he slept in his wife’s bed. His own desperate need for privacy in the matter left him literally _sneaking_ onto the elevator to go from his level to Amy’s. He darted down the hallway on silent feet, past Walter and Megan talking in the elder’s room and past Happy poring over blueprints in the library.

Were it not for his heart pounding in his ears, Amy’s level would’ve seemed eerily still even after the quiet of his own level. Despite the urge to do so, he refused to call out his wife’s name just to make sure that she was here. She was his _wife_ ; no one would dare question his being here, if there were even any servants around at this hour… but he still said nothing. He walked as quietly now as he had downstairs, but slower and slower the closer he got to Amy’s bedroom.

His knock on the door sounded booming in the quiet hall.

There was a sudden wave of alternately tittering and calming voices form the other side of the door, and no less than three attendants abruptly flew past him and into the elevator. Once they were gone, he peered nervously into the muted light of Amy’s room. He was pretty sure that they both swallowed when they caught sight of one another.

“Hey,” he breathed, standing awkwardly in the doorway.

“Hey,” Amy repeated, smiling timidly at him from where the attendants had left her in the middle of her bed.

She had been painted and polished and primped, and even Toby could admit that she hadn’t been so beautiful since their wedding day… but it wasn’t until she smiled at him that the pounding of his heart slowed and he thought to relax.

Amy asked, curious but nervous – though no more than he seemed to be – “Are you going to come in?”

So he did.

* * *

_Toby Curtis_

_Year Four_

It wasn’t love that Toby felt for Amy, but there were times that he thought it might be something close.

Prenatal care wasn’t exactly his realm of expertise, but what little Amy proved to need he determined to give himself. If he couldn’t find it within himself to give her the emotional presence she seemed to want in their marriage, then he could at least care for her physically.

Probably odd in the realm of “normal” situations, but theirs wasn’t a terribly normal situation, and, again, it was the best he felt he could manage. Trying where he could had to count for something, right?

It was weird and cool and terrifying to note how their child – _his child_ – was growing inside of her, and though her excitement never managed to rub off on him, it fostered a… kinship between them.

Maybe it was friendship, maybe they were just enjoying the feeling of being on the same team; whatever it was, it felt nice – and, again, vaguely terrifying – to be at Amy’s side during her pregnancy.

So when it came time for her to give birth, Toby opted to be the doctor in the situation, but he was _there_. Megan was Amy’s moral support, and a first-generation attendant functioned as Toby’s right-hand nurse, and together they brought a baby boy into the world.

Afterward – after the birth and the changing of clothes and sheets and cleaning of the room and the people, after Megan and the attendants and everyone else had left – Toby sat down on the edge of Amy’s bed. He pulled her to him and kissed her head; it seemed like the natural thing to do in the moment. He didn’t quite trust himself to hold the infant in Amy’s arms – he’d checked him over, he was healthy, and that was enough – and he was content to let his wife rest against him instead.

“What do you want to name him now that we’ve seen him?” Amy asked tiredly.

She was _so_ exhausted – after all, she’d just given birth at _thirteen_ – that a part of Toby worried for her. He filed it away to discuss with Cabe later if necessary and shrugged.

“Whatever his name is, I want it to start with an ‘A.’”

That much he could think to give her. That was the only way he knew of to thank her, though for what he wasn’t necessarily sure… or wasn’t willing to consider.

She smiled up at him in happy surprise, murmuring as her eyes slid closed, “Aaron, then.”

“Aaron,” Toby agreed as Amy burrowed into his shoulder.

With his wife falling asleep on his shoulder, Toby looked down at his son, feeling awed and afraid and a little horrified as he watched the tiny, red little life that he now had partial responsibility of. In the silent room, he ran a hesitant finger over the baby’s velvety cheek and wondered if _this_ fondness was what love felt like.

He doubted it, but still… he had to wonder.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the short chapter; it's really just a set-up for what's to come.

_Paige Dineen_

_Year Five_

Not long ago, Paige Dineen had wondered if the world was ever going to stop making her feel like she was on a roller coaster. She was only nine, but the world seemed to have forgotten that a long time ago. The world had forced her into adulthood long before she’d ever thought to ask for it.

First, a year ago, her first-generation father had died. Then, hearing of his death, her mother – who had long drifted in and out of her life – had moved Paige in with her. Within a month of that move, Veronica Dineen had woken her daughter in the middle of the night and told her they needed to run.

Con woman that she was, Veronica had ticked off one of her “friends,” and there was a very good chance that they wouldn’t be safe in their house anymore. So into the darkness they ran – only to end up trying to make a life on the streets states away.

The fact that Paige had started her period young had been small potatoes next to the bigger picture.

Until her mother had innocently, embarrassingly revealed that fact in the course of a conversation with one of her richest “marks” – who, by all appearances, was a sweet little old lady out to help young girls like Paige who found themselves on the streets. Rich people could be charitable like that, and Paige liked that about this woman.

Until a week later, Paige had found herself a target of Gatherers – apparently, a very _specific_ target. When she’d woken up in a mansion, it had been to her mother’s mark and the woman’s son at her bedside.

“Hello, Paige,” the young man said with a bright, handsome smile. He looked to be in his early twenties, she noted dazedly. “My name’s Drew. And you already know my mom. We’ve been looking for someone like you for a very long time.” Then he laughed, scoffing, “Sorry. That sounded creepy, didn’t it?”

Very, very hesitantly, Paige nodded. She felt like she had never been on such high alert, but there was something charming about the man, unassuming even, that made her want to trust him. _Maybe, just maybe,_ she had thought that first day, _she would somehow be safe with this Drew._

She had been very, very wrong. At nine years old, she had become the wife of a twenty-two-year-old because, according to him, “her body was telling her she was ready for it, and that made it okay.”

According to _Paige_ , nothing had ever felt so un-“okay” in her life.

* * *

_Paige Dineen Baker_

_Year Six_

When she’d told Drew and her mother-in-law, June, that she was pregnant, June had screamed for literal _hours_ about how neither she nor Drew had wanted this – and Paige knew it was true. They hadn’t wanted a baby in the house. Paige, scared and lonely and still trying to adjust to this new and unwanted life within the first few months of her marriage, was pretty sure _she_ didn’t even want the baby.

For all of his faults and for all that he was a special sort of sick in the head – _pedophile,_ her mind hissed the word she didn’t dare voice – it was Drew that talked both of the women in his life to keep the baby. He didn’t have much time left, he’d reminded them – a thought that left Paige feeling relieved – and wouldn’t it be wonderful – this especially to June – if they had someone to remember him by? If he had a legacy to leave on this earth? That, in particular, was a thought that left Paige feeling mostly repulsed, but it convinced June to keep the baby, and they _always_ overruled what Paige wanted in this house.

Yet, she found that as her pregnancy progressed, she began to think of their offspring as _hers._ Because Drew was right; he would be a part of their child’s life for only a couple of years, and then he would be Paige’s alone. And _that_ was a thought that she could get behind.

So they kept the baby, a little boy she and Drew named Ralph, and what had once been one more point of contention in this unwanted prison was, in the end, the only real light in her personal hell.


End file.
